Crossings

by Alex Landragin

  ‘That’s right. I’m on the way there myself, to lock up. I’ll see you out.’

  The woman took me by the arm and uttered the two words I least expected to hear: ‘Come, darling.’ As we walked, she held her face against my shoulder, as if wishing to keep it out of the groundskeeper’s sight. So starved for affection was I that, despite the circumstances, I found myself enjoying this simulation of it.

  We marched up the incline towards the rear gate when, from above to our left, we heard the rumble of rolling thunder in the clear blue sky. The woman kept her face averted. Seconds later, a wail of air raid sirens came from every direction for the first time since the start of the invasion.

  ‘Oh là là!’ said the groundskeeper. ‘Those boches always pick the worst moment!’ He ushered us out of the gate, locking himself in, and wished us not the customary bonne soirée but bon courage, before trotting away. I seized the opportunity to reach into the woman’s pocket and take her derringer.

  ‘Hey!’ she said, slapping me on the cheek. ‘Give it back or I’ll scream.’

  ‘I doubt anyone will be particularly interested,’ I said, throwing the gun over the cemetery wall, ‘given the circumstances.’ From behind us, another whistle. A policeman in a black cape was in the middle of the next intersection, waving his white gloves frantically to and fro. ‘He’s pointing us to the nearest shelter.’

  I took the woman by the hand and we began to run, with sirens wailing around us. We came to a stop in the middle of the intersection, where the traffic policeman was directing us towards a corner bistro. Some ran in that direction, others stood about on the street or on balconies above it, looking skyward, staring at the heavens as if observing an astronomical phenomenon. Outside the bistro, a man in a white armband and a helmet from the previous war was urging people inside. We made our way in and through a throng of bodies and wicker chairs to a trapdoor behind the counter, out of which poked the top rungs of a stepladder. The atmosphere was congenial: some patrons, interrupted during their aperitif, were still holding their glasses, and one even tried to descend the ladder single-handed until the shelter warden lost his patience. He stood at the top of the ladder with a hand-rolled cigarette suspended between his lips, his helmet tilted at a rakish angle, holding glasses and purses and shoes while people disappeared into the cellar. ‘Come along,’ he repeated, ‘there’s room for everyone.’ And then, bending down into the void, he yelled, ‘Make room down there!’

  The woman went first. When she let go of my hand I realised I’d been holding it since we began running. Once underground, we were jostled into a corner, pushed together ever closer by the arrival of each newcomer, the last of whom was the traffic policeman who had waved us in. Several more people were left outside, complaining loudly, while the warden urged them to seek another shelter. A sense of improvisation pervaded the entire scene: there were no chairs, so everyone had to stand, including a one-legged veteran of the last war. The walls were lined with shelves bearing wheels of cheese and racks loaded with dusty bottles of wines and spirits. Hams and sausages were suspended from above. The bistro owner stood on a box in the corner, hands on hips, eyeing the room for thieves.

  The trapdoor was lowered, plunging us into a gloom barely relieved by a single naked bulb buzzing overhead. There must have been forty or fifty people squeezed together in that cellar. My companion was pressed up against me, her hair brushing the stubble of my chin. The sirens outside stopped their wailing and the room was engulfed by a heart-pounding silence as everyone listened for the sound of the destruction that was surely about to rain down from the heavens. I wondered if, by the time we emerged from our hiding place, the Paris we knew would still exist. But then, I thought, if the building above us was bombed we’d be buried alive.

  I felt her body tremble like a captive bird and put my arms around her, not to embrace her but to push back against the weight of human bodies crushing us both. My nostrils were stinging with the smell of the sweat of the crowd and my shirt was sticky. My heart thumped wildly – there it was, that sharp stab of pain with every heartbeat, the premonition of my mortality. I had pills for this pain, pills I never took. Her cheek was pressed against my chest. I was frightened too, but I’d been frightened so long fear had become a part of me, twisting its way around and through me like a vine, sustained by the same sap that kept the rest of me alive.

  There was a click of the lid of a cigarette lighter. Someone on the far side of the room said, ‘I really need to smoke. I’m claustrophobic.’ I smelled burning tobacco. The trembling of the woman in my arms became more violent. Her whole body was shivering. Between the silence and the crush and the smells of meats, cheeses, sweat and tobacco, I felt my own rising tide of panic: beads of sweat trickled down my neck and back. My heart was beating ever faster, my breathing was short, a migraine was building behind my eyes. With all my senses lunging upward and beyond the cellar for a sign of what was happening outside, of what was to be our fate, I lost all notion of time’s passage. I began to imagine that we would never emerge from this cellar, that we would all die inside it, buried alive under a mountain of debris. I thought of Rotterdam: it had taken only four days for the Nazis to reduce Europe’s greatest port to rubble. ‘I need to get out of here,’ I whispered, more to myself than anyone else. I felt her arms tighten around my waist. Somehow, that modest sensation dislodged something inside me, and the panic that had threatened to drown me began to subside.

  As the minutes dragged on, there was only silence from above. Paris, it seemed, had been granted a stay of execution. The sirens started up again, a sign that the raid was over and we were free to go. The warden climbed the ladder and the trapdoor swung open. Fresh air and cool evening light washed over us. More cigarettes were lit and the gathering burst into a dozen simultaneous conversations. People waited their turn to climb the ladder. Some of them remained to talk and drink in the bistro, others lingered outside on the street under a golden sky. They chatted, promised to meet again for a drink, shook hands and wished each other good luck.

  As we neared the stepladder the woman from the cemetery started climbing before me. I was about to follow her, but I ceded my place to an elderly gentleman waiting beside me. By the time I emerged above ground in the bistro, the woman was gone. I rushed out and caught a glimpse of red hibiscus on black silk on the other side of the street. She was already half a block away, running with her shoes in her hands. I set off after her. It felt good to run after our brief and anxious imprisonment. And I didn’t want to let her vanish. She’d helped me somehow, down there in the cellar, without even knowing it.

  I caught up with her at the back gate of the cemetery, where she was gripping the grilles, shaking them as if they might miraculously open. But the gate would not be cajoled and the woman turned and collapsed against it, slumping to her haunches and burying her face in her hands. I approached her. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, bending down onto one knee and touching her on the shoulder.

  She looked at me as if for the first time, eyes sparkling with tears. ‘I have nowhere to go.’

  {157}

  The Apartment

  I WOKE TO find two coal-black eyes looking back into mine. The woman from the cemetery. The back of her fingers were stroking my stubbled cheek and she was murmuring something reassuring.

  ‘You had a nightmare,’ she said.

  ‘Was I screaming?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right. You warned me.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘You told me you have nightmares every night.’

  ‘Yes, so I did.’

  A full ashtray, two dirty glasses and an empty bottle of calvados on the table. In the dull light of the bedside lamp, my one-room apartment was plunged into a deep, middle-of-the-night silence. I recalled inviting her to spend the night. I was in the armchair. She’d been sleeping in my bed in her black silk dress. I remembered the events that had brought her here – the cem
etery, the raid, the shelter. I was surprised she’d accepted the offer. She’d told me her name: Madeleine.

  She gave me a sidelong glance. ‘What were you dreaming about?’

  ‘Oh, a jumble of things. I have a few recurring nightmares. They always seem to take place in the past. This one was on one of those old-fashioned three-masted sailing ships. I was the ship’s surgeon, and had to saw off a man’s arm with nothing more to numb the patient’s pain than alcohol and laudanum. That’s one I only get every now and then. There are others. In some, I’m on a tropical island. In others, I’m a woman raising a child during the Prussian siege, or Baudelaire, believe it or not, living an impoverished life with Jeanne Duval. The one element that seems to recur above all is . . .’ I paused, somewhat embarrassed by what I was saying.

  Madeleine, who had been about to light a cigarette, froze and looked at me with a curious expression, engrossed and terrified at once. The match’s flame lit her face in a soft orange glow. ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Eyes.’

  She lit the cigarette and leaned forward. ‘What kind of eyes?’

  ‘All kinds, in all colours, on all kinds of faces. All my dreams seem to end with me looking into the eyes of someone, and every time I get to that point I wake up screaming.’

  ‘Why do you scream?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘And your accent,’ she said. ‘Are you German?’

  ‘Yes. I’m from Berlin.’

  She bit her lower lip and looked away, holding the cigarette with trembling hands and puffing nervously. She was, for a moment, entirely alone, withdrawn into herself as if unaware of my presence.

  After a minute or two she stood and sauntered over to my bookshelf, crammed with books. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a writer.’

  ‘I see you have a great many books about Baudelaire.’ She picked up Les Fleurs du mal. She smiled, curling up one side of her mouth almost imperceptibly. ‘Which is your favourite poem of his?’

  ‘That’s a hard question to answer. There are so many. Perhaps “To a Passerby”.’

  With her forefinger running over the spines of the books, she recited, from memory, ‘Fugitive beauty, in whose gaze I was suddenly reborn . . .’

  ‘Will I see you again only in eternity?’

  She gave me a searching look from across the room, as if not knowing quite what to make of me. ‘Interesting choice.’

  ‘And yours?’ I asked.

  ‘“The Albatross”.’

  ‘The Poet is the prince of clouds, the storm-clouds haunting and the archer mocking . . .’

  ‘But exiled on earth amid the crowds, his great wings prevent him from walking.’ She gave me that little smile again. ‘He stole that poem.’

  ‘Stole it? From whom?’

  ‘From me.’ She turned back to the shelf and studied the books with her head tilted at an angle. ‘I gave him the idea. I told him the tale of the albatross, and he turned it into a poem.’

  ‘You knew him?’ The notion was absurd, of course, but it was a pleasure to indulge her fantasy.

  ‘Yes. Not in this body, of course. In another.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Jeanne’s.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow,’ I said, as it began to dawn on me that she was serious. ‘Do you mean Jeanne Duval? His mistress?’

  Madeleine sauntered to the bed and lay back on the mattress. ‘I was his mistress,’ she sighed. ‘His mistress, his slave, his torment – and, for a while at least, I was also his muse.’ She snorted. ‘Muse – how I detest that word. Charles was a thief. He stole from everyone – money, poems, books, love, you name it. Of course, he had talent. But his greatest talent was for theft.’

  Perhaps, at any other time, I would have reacted to these signs of delusion differently. I might have been more guarded. I might have gently shepherded Madeleine through the night and then out of my life. But, at that moment, her fancies seemed harmless compared to the great tide of madness consuming the outside world. ‘How is that possible?’ I asked.

  She shot me a piercing glance. ‘It is possible, that’s all that matters.’ She sat up on one elbow and looked at me. Despite what she was saying, I found myself enjoying the sensation of her gaze. ‘When did they begin, these nightmares of yours?’ she asked.

  ‘When I was a young man, just before the last war. When I was maybe nineteen or twenty.’

  ‘What caused them?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Surely something happened around that time. They couldn’t have just started by themselves, caused by nothing in particular. Were you sick? Did you have an accident? Maybe you were in the war?’

  ‘No, it was before that. Only I can’t remember.’

  ‘Think back carefully.’

  ‘I’m trying, but I can’t . . .’

  ‘Can I ask you a question that may seem a little strange?’ she asked. I nodded. ‘Have you ever been hypnotised? Has anyone ever asked you to look them in their eyes? Not just a passing glance, but to really look, for several minutes?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Are you sure? No hypnotist, no magician, no woman you loved who asked you to look them in the eyes? Even just for fun? Try to remember.’

  ‘Not that I can recall – although . . .’ At that moment, a memory returned to me for the first time in many years. ‘When I was a young man, I visited Paris for two weeks in the summer of 1913, when Paris still dazzled. I had an encounter that seemed nothing more than an amusing anecdote, one of those stories that young people like to tell when they return home from their travels as a sign of the worldliness they have acquired. Paris back then was still a walled city. Cars were a curiosity. Horses and trolleys ruled the streets, and a pedestrian could still walk down the middle of a boulevard without being run over. I thought everything about the city was enchanting. I liked to browse the bouquinistes’ stalls and then find a café somewhere in the Latin Quarter where I could read and observe the passing crowd.

  ‘One such afternoon, I noticed, among the men in frock coats and hats and the ladies in long white dresses, a stout elderly woman pushing a small cart on wheels, bent over almost at right angles, walking in my direction with a slow, waddling gait. I was drawn to her as soon as she appeared from a block away. I studied her approach, stopping at the café terraces and offering her wares to the patrons until she was shooed away by a waiter. When a customer took some semblance of an interest in what she was selling, as if in accordance with some unwritten code, the waiter would leave her to her commerce. She was an unforgettable sight. Her body was twisted forward with age, her fingers were gnarled and her face seemed no less wrinkled than a walnut shell. Even in the bright summer sunshine, her clothes were colourless rags. But her expression was cheerful. She was one of those old women whose demeanour has naturally withered into a permanent beam of light. As she drew closer, I noticed her lips were in constant motion, as if she were murmuring something intended only for herself, which is not an uncommon sight in any city. Finally she neared the terrace where I was sitting and caught my eye. “Would you like a book, sir?” she asked. She had an accent, but I couldn’t pick it. Perhaps, I thought, she’s a foreigner like me. A waiter saw her from inside the café and rushed out, barking at her to leave the customers alone. I waved him away.

  ‘She was a book peddler, a rare sight even in those days, although it had once been the noblest of street professions. By 1913, however, book peddlers had almost disappeared. I wanted to pay her my respects, to help her in some way, the kind of gesture tourists are fond of. I beckoned to her to bring her cart of second-hand books closer. As she did, I heard her reciting, in a lilting accent, like an incantation uttered so often it’s become a reflex: “Adventure stories, crime stories, ghost tales, tales of love and romance, books new and old from near and far, only two francs!” She continued the recitative as she opened the cart’s cover to let me browse her selection. It was outdated and eccentric. Like her, the books w
ere relics of a bygone era. At first glance, she had nothing I wished to read, but all the same I asked her for a recommendation. “They’re all good, monsieur, the finest of the age. Two francs each, or six for ten.” She continued to recite her incantation in a low voice, as I cast another look over the sorry selection and picked up a book at random. “How’s this one?” I asked. “I wouldn’t know,” she replied, “for to be perfectly honest with you, monsieur, I’m not much of a reader.” She burst into a fit of wheezy laughter cut short by consumptive coughs, whose residue she expertly spat onto the pavement. “Not of books, at any rate,” she added. “Time, monsieur,” she continued, although I’d said nothing. “I read time. The future as well as the past. I am an expert in the ancient arts of remembering what has been and foretelling what is yet to be. And all for just two francs.”

  ‘The waiter approached us, shooting the woman a contemptuous glance. “How about it, sir? Who would not want to know what surprises fate has in store for us? Only two francs.” I took two coins from my pocket and gave them to her, holding out my hand with palm turned skyward. “Begging your pardon, sir,” she said, “but I don’t read palms. I read eyes.” I told her I’d never heard of such a thing. “Oh, it is a noble art that comes to us from ancient times. No doubt, sir, you will have heard the expression that the eyes are the window to the soul. I have mastered the technique.” She drew closer. “May I look?” I nodded. “I ask only that you look into my eyes, and stay still. Do not look away. Do not speak. Do not allow yourself to be distracted – by the crowd, by the waiter, by anyone. I need only look into your eyes for three or four minutes, and then all will be revealed.”

  ‘I don’t know how or why, but I must have passed out. When I came to, I was surrounded by a circle of onlookers. One man was leaning over me, holding my hand, talking to me, although I could barely make out what he was saying. My head was heavy and foggy, as if it had just been struck or woken from a long, narcotic sleep. The book peddler was opposite me, slumped back in her chair, her eyes wide open in terror, her mouth opening and closing, like a fish just hooked from the sea. The waiter appeared, asking what had happened. Two of the onlookers began talking at once, describing what they’d just witnessed – that we’d been looking at each other in silence when we both began convulsing for a short time, and then fainted. The waiter leaned over the woman and began shaking her by the shoulders. She was awake but barely aware of her surroundings. “You’d better get out of here before the police arrive,” he told her. “I’ve a good mind to have you arrested.” He turned to me and began apologising profusely.’